Heyo, human beings from outer space!
Please humor me and pretend like tomorrow isn't December and i'm not two months late for this. Thankee.
Today's prompt is Radio Silence and was requested by DyslexiccRatt.
Read on if you dare.
After a battle ended in a Republic victory, there was a collective silence. Everyone would take a breath. It was never intentional, but always there. Then the general would call out "We've done it again, men!" or something along the lines, perhaps more somber if it was a taxing victory. They'd break into cheers then, a roar of hope in all the darkness of war.
But that day, the victory wasn't taxing. It was earned but not catastrophic. When the general's call never came, they waited for their commander's shout. Battlefields weren't small, and if the Jedi split up, Tano would announce their victory to anyone near her with a, "pat yourselves on the back, boys!"
Her voice never came, either.
That's when Rex knew something was wrong. They were supposed to be nearby, and sure, they might've run off after one Seppie or another, but neither of them had said anything over comms.
Maybe they were still going on another part of the battlefield? There were tall grasses and many canyons here, so perhaps they were still trapped within a fierce battle between jagged rock walls?
Rex flipped through the comm channels in his bucket and heard only static from everyone.
"Anyone got comms?" Rex called out to the men who were within earshot.
After a moment of flipping through their channels, the men replied in the negative.
Stang. Jammed comms.
"Captain!" someone shouted, and Rex whirled around to face him. "Look!"
Rex did and breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted a group of men weaving their way through the boulders and grasses. He listened for the victorious shout of the General, maybe even the Commander.
But neither of them came.
"Men," Rex greeted them curly, masterfully hiding his growing fear. "What's the General and Commander's position?"
"Not sure, sir," said Jesse. "We thought they were with you?"
Stang. "No, they followed after your group. Did they send out any other platoons?" Rex didn't add without my knowledge.
"No, sir," Jesse told him. "There were only two groups."
Stang, stang, stang.
"They probably ran off on their own; you know how they are. Always chasing butterflies and danger." It was optimistic and they all knew it. And it wasn't how war worked.
In war, positivity provides hope and motive, but pessimism is much more realistic and much more likely to keep soldiers (and Jedi) alive... especially with the ones who had a knack for getting kidnapped.
"Comms are down," Rex said, mustering up a collected and strategic mindset. "Regroup, men, we're going looking for our Jedi."
///
Why did his Jedi always choose the wrong places and times to be kidnapped?
Rex shoved through another thick patch of grass that reached centimeters higher than his helmet tip.
Though his internal chrono proved him otherwise, Rex could swear that they'd been searching for so much as a trace of either Jedi, and they'd so far come up with nothing.
Comms were still jammed, which meant the men communicated by sending messengers, and Hardcase and Tup were both elected for the position. They were grumbling after a few trips.
"C'mon!" Hardcase whined when Rex sent him back to the other end of the search. "Why me?"
"Because you act like a civvie kid on a sugar high," Rex said. "You have too much energy, this is putting it to good use."
"That is so not true!" Hardcase gasped dramatically, throwing the back of his hand across his helmet where his forehead would be. "I am very mature and–" he cut himself off abruptly, bristling all Rex's senses. "Do you see that over there, all that red? Is that blood?"
Rex followed Hardcase's outstretched arm. Darkness had just started to fall, and Rex flipped on his light for a better view. He froze when he saw what Hardcase saw.
It glittered in his light, still blotchy damp as the dry dirt soaked it in. There was so much. Rex could only hope that it wasn't all from their tiny commander; if she'd bled that much, there was no way she'd survived.
Rex traced the edge of the scarlet puddle and noticed the way it stuck out at one end as if someone had been dragged. He stepped closer and traced the streaks, Hardcase following suit.
They cut off abruptly, which meant some sort of transport.
"Notify the men," Rex told Hardcase, who didn't complain this time, instead saluting tightly. "We found ourselves a lead."
///
Light came bobbing back into the sky before the men finally spotted the location of a place where the Jedi could potentially be found. Rex had long since grown impatient, frustration and anxiety eating away at him.
Tup came with the message, breathless from sprinting and shouting. He turned as sharply as he could and the others took off after him.
They threw together a shabby plan that was just solid enough to get them by and charged into the cement block of a building. It was almost too easy, blasting and trampling the scarce droid security.
They found the General first, crumpled in a heap in a cell. Blood matted his hair and his robes had been torn. But when they broke through the door and roused him, he sprang to life.
"Ahsoka," Anakin coughed as Fives passed over a canteen of water. "They separated us. Did you find her?"
"We're about to," Rex said.
Kix gave the General a quick check to make sure there wasn't anything extreme enough that it needed attending to immediately. Then they were off again, Anakin feeling for her and guiding them along. They split up when the general's sense was clouded.
Minutes passed before Jesse came sprinting up the hallway howling about how they found her.
They raced down to the cell and found her crowded by many of the men, Kix and another junior medic crouched behind the forest of legs.
As Anakin shoved his way through, Rex's foot slipped on something sticky on the floor. He looked down. Red streaked across his boot and he grimaced, observing several gooey puddles.
It made him sick.
Anakin started shouting and cursing, but Kix had yet to speak. That either meant the situation only looked bad or it was even worse.
They raced from that place like stampeding animals, Tano strapped to a stretcher and intubated.
"Soldier," Rex caught one of the junior medics by the arm. "Report."
"Not good, sir, but Kix works miracles."
It was an unspoken fear of annihilation.
They leaped into the gunships. Rex didn't make it to the one with Tano, which left him to worry along with the other feverish men, their victory greatly dampened.
Rex wasn't permitted to enter the med bay on the Resolute, either, so he went to the commander's quarters since he could have privacy there. He paced the floor, mind racing.
All he could do was wait.
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Word Count: 1148
Published: totally not 30 Nov. 2023 but yea
Sorry not sorry :)
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Hasta la vida, peoples!